Millions of pounds of investment is being made available in Scotland to build more affordable homes to rent, particularly in the middle market segment, it has been announced.
A £47.5 million loan is being provided by the Scottish Government to the Places for People regeneration fund to deliver a thousand homes across the country.
‘This investment will support people on low and modest incomes to access high quality rented accommodation at affordable rates and is one of the many ways in which we are delivering on our target of 50,000 affordable homes by 2021,’ said Housing Minister Kevin Stewart .
‘Affordable housing is about more than just bricks and mortar. We want everyone to have a safe, warm home and schemes like this will help to create a fairer Scotland, while delivering great economic benefits,’ he added.
According to Chris Jones, managing director of Places for People’s asset management business, the investment will deliver a significant number of affordable homes to people across Scotland.
‘This fund will also provide a great opportunity for institutional investors to provide funding for the next generation of Scotland’s affordable homes which Places for People will look to deliver in the coming years,’ he commented.
However, overall it is suggested that the number of new homes being built is well short of what is needed. The latest official figures shows that there was a 4.8% increase in the total number of housing completions in 2017. But at 17,739 this was just 806 more than in 2016.
‘It’s good news that the figures for both new housing starts and completions are positive but a modest 806 extra homes demonstrates the scale of challenge facing us at a time when we need to rapidly increase supply,’ said Nicola Barclay, chief executive of representative body Homes for Scotland.
‘Our members, who deliver homes of all tenures, tell us that difficulties with the regulatory consents process means they simply can’t get diggers on site quickly enough to satisfy the need and demand that exists,’ she pointed out.
The official figures also show that new housing growth in 2017 was driven by the South East of Scotland at 20.8%, followed by Highland and Moray at 18.4% but the number of homes being built fell by 16.2% in East Central Scotland.
